Living Without Cheese

We thought we were being smart.

We thought we were doing it the fast and easy way.

A thing I’ve learned about Asia.

The fastest way is NEVER the easiest.

The plan was to grab a minibus from Pai straight to the border town of Chiang Khong, grab a few hours kip at a guesthouse there, get up early, scoot across the border and be in Luang Prabang in Laos by dinner time.

This is what actually happened. (Jesus I feel like I’m writing a script for Law & Order)

At 8pm we settled ourselves into a wee minivan. There were only 6 of us onboard so plenty of room to stretch out and try and get a bit of sleep. And then we started driving.

There are 762 bends in the road between Pai and Chiang Mai. No, I did not count them. Somebody else did, and printed it on a load of t-shirts, but whatever, I believe them, because even though I didn’t count them, I felt every single one of them. Sleep was impossible. When you weren’t being flung to the left, you were being tossed to the right. When you weren’t climbing up steep mountains sides, you were hurtling in the dark through a foggy gap between cliff faces. And all you can tell for sure in the dark is that you can’t see a fucking thing, but you can sure smell the girl puking out the window behind you.

At about bend 24, the thunderstorm hit. Lightening raged over our little silver bus, following us for the rest of the night. The wind whipped us all over the road, and not a sound could be heard over the rain pounding on the roof. Not even puking.

At least it brought a bit of light, so now you could actually SEE the sheer cliff faces and menacing curves now.

Halfway through the journey, we pulled up at a petrol station. A few people dashed in to use the loo. And came running out gasping that there were swarms of mosquitoes, armies of angry ants and a few slightly irate cockroaches patrolling the bathrooms against foreign invaders. Or maybe just hiding from the rain.

There would be no peeing that night.

Another bus pulled up and emptied itself into us. 6 became 20. We told ourselves it was cozy, whilst positioning limbs carefully to avoid special areas being damaged by flailing limbs. And then came the potholes. Many potholes. Potholes of all sizes and shapes. Potholes who dreamed of being valleys and were emphatic about achieving this dream. More fog. Some bouncing. A little puking. And potholes. Always potholes.

At 4am we arrived in Chiang Khong. Thank Christ, we thought. A bed! A bathroom! Shelter from the storm! Yippee!

Cheerfully, we made our way inside and were told to leave our bags in a corner of a semi outdoor sort of barn. It had a roof that only met 2 of the walls, because, well, there only were 2 walls. With rugs on the floor. And a table. And a chair. Lots of rugs. About 20 rugs.

It was when the owner started yelling at the big black dog that had made himself comfortable on one of the rugs that I began to suspect that we would not be getting a bed that night.

I’ll gloss over the horror dawning on the faces of all my fellow bus goers, followed by disbelief, followed by revulsion, followed by a fervent desire to grab a rug that was still dry and a patch of ground that was not being rained upon. We legged it, rugs and bags tossed up into the air, the dismayed dog running for cover under the table.

Did I mention the thunderstorm was still in full swing? Cos, yeah, it was.

Ryan and I met each other eyes at one stage and burst into laughter. Because if you don’t laugh, you’re only going to cry.

And so we settled down for night, using our bags as pillows, the floor as a bouncy mattress, and a doggy rug as cozy duvet cover. All the while the rain poured around us, leaving us covered in a fine mist by morning.

This is interesting, I thought to myself.

I am a bad bad little blogger.

Now that I have that off my chest, I’ll continue.

And will break the last few weeks down into digestible chunks.

So, Pai was fun. We partied and chilled out and joined the backpacker massif in having a rip roaring good time. I was befriended by one of the hairiest and friendliest Thai man I ever did see. He was playing guitar in a pretty much empty bar one Sunday evening. Just me, a Japanese family and two awfully strange German men who liked to stare. Num (yes, Num) played his hairy heart out to us, regaling us with Doors classics (didn’t recognise the one about the stains at first, but turned out he was trying to say strange). Until mid song he cried out to me “Noooo! Please don’t leeeeave meee! Don’t leave! I have to play til midnight!” I had no idea that the rest of the bar had escaped. Leaving me. And him. Singing at me. I hadn’t the heart to leave. And by God I’ll tell you, it’s mighty uncomfortable when a hairy Thai man is staring into your eyes from 4 feet away singing about stains. Later, while he did my hair into a nice bun, he thanked me for staying and asked to borrow a hair tie because his afro kept blowing into his eyes. A strange but interesting guy.

One evening, we decided a game of cards in our bamboo bungalow with a few bottles of Chang beer was well in order. We searched high and low for a deck of cards. At least 2 shops.

“Cards! Cards!” Tracey yelled to the nice man in shop number 2. “Do you have any CARDS!” (because obviously speaking louder really bridges the language gap) and mimed dealing a deck.

The nice man looked at her oddly, reached into his barrel, pulled out a deck and said “Yeah no problem, that’ll be 140 baht please, can I get you anything else?” Justifiably embarrassed, she paid and slunk away.

While picking out the frostiest of beers in the trustiest of 7/11s, all the power went out in town. Rainy season can be a total kick in the gonads sometimes. But thanks to an assortment of mini-mag torches, 3 cigarette lighters, 2 cigarettes, a headlamp, a pre-purchased pineapple shake, a wind-up torch (with radio included in the wind-up ness!!) and a few candles donated by our landlord, we were back in business. Until we realized we had no bottle opener. The gonads were once again feeling the pinch. It was like crisis after crisis. I only wanted a frickin’ game of cards and a beer! It was a mess. There was fizzy beer all over the room, the ants had a drunken field day.

But it was fun. And later that night we met some ladyboys.

PS. Watching The Lord of the Rings is tough enough at the best of times. Watching it dubbed in German and subtitled in Thai is both a mental and physical challenge.

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